Chained
by jayilyse
Summary: He might not see you...but you see him.


Karkat.

The "angry little guy with nubby horns" – the incredibly inconsistent troll. The guy "who acts like a wriggler" and changes his mind on every matter at hand, mostly to mess with some other troll.

You know him better than that.

He's just as scared as the rest of them are, just as much of a mess, if not more so. He constantly questions what he does or thinks, what is right and what is wrong, and fails to communicate those two things to his own dismay. He's very impatient. You know this all too well. His impatience is with himself, not with everyone else. They just get the brunt of it.

You feel fur him – but feeling fur him isn't the only thing you do.

You have feelings _for _him.

You cannot explain these feelings, however. You can't say it's a flush – though you have it as that on your shipping wall. You can't say it's black. It's certainly not ashen and you've no urge to be pale, since you already have Equius. It's like the emotions transcend the quadrants themselves – at least on your end.

Nepeta Leijon, many trolls would call you pawsitively crazy.

You don't talk to him much. It's not that you're scared. It's what you know. Or think. Or feel. You're not completely sure what it is. It feels like you were together somehow before, but things changed. The way he talks to Terezi shows you that. He always has a scowl on his face – that doesn't go away, even with her around.

He doesn't scowl at you so much.

Sometimes, his face even softens. His eyebrows will knit themselves in confusion – like he's remembering something, yet can't think of what it is. You hope against all hope that he gets the same feeling as you do. You would give plenty of things up fur him to just _see_ you fur more than what is purrceived – like how you see him. You'd even give up saying meowthfuls of cat puns – something you only do when you're serious. The others, besides Equius, only see you as FLARPer who creeps on others to make shipping walls. While you do have a shipping wall, and you love FLARPing, what they say about who you are is incorrect. You are just observant. You like observing others, and writing down what you see – ideally, on a wall. You even observe yourself, often catching yourself staring, but not at him specifically. You have an odd fascination with his leggings. You are also empawthetic, and if the others asked you to, you would help in any way you pawssibly could.

There are many things that trolls see and say that are completely wrong. A lot of the time, trolls purrceive themselves wrong too. He sees himself as a failure. He has purrfect hind-vision and rants at himself furiously for actions that turned out wrong. It's why he doesn't even get along with his future selves. It's quite the catastrophe. His anger is not his only trait. Anyone who says that is wrong. He has a trait that can barely be categorized – most trolls don't have it.

He cares.

He cares about everyone and tries to help, in his round-about way. He has "the disease of friendship" that he wants to hate, yet always had in the purrst place. When he's gone too far he is sincerely apawlogetic. He doesn't know how to say sorry the right way and it always seems to backfire on him. He constantly berates himself; you hear him screaming silly things he thinks no one else can hear. "I gave their universe fucking cancer!" is a phrase he says purretty often in the catacombs of the meteor. He doesn't want anything bad to happen to anybody. He thinks everything is entirely his fault – puts the blame all on his own uppurr rotational back conjoiner.

You think a lot of it has to do with his want to be a leader. When you look at him, you feel like this has happened before – a strange sense of déjà vu. Purrhaps he thinks if he's purrfect as a leader, he can make a change. The mistakes keep pawling up for him – he doesn't feel like he can because of all the screw ups. You know he wants to make a change terribly – he knows he can do it, he just doesn't know how to go about; he can't figure out how to do it, if he can do it at all. He wants to be hero, so that he can protect everyone.

You know many things, and one of them is that no troll can be purrfect.

He is extremely impurrfect, when you think about it. It's hard being six sweeps and no one understands. He's a young troll growing up not knowing who he is – only knowing what he wants to be, and trying to figure out what he _is_ going to be. He hides his blood color, so he's probably low on the hemospectrum. His caste doesn't matter to you, though. He's an ordinary guy in the most amazing way; he's a troll in an abnormal situation that he can't quite piece together by himself – but tries very hard to do it anyway.

He tries much harder than he would ever admit to. He is a completely flawed creature – especially by Alternian standard. Yet he keeps going – climbing and climbing to reach summits, against hardship and the beating heat of Alternian suns, only to be chained to one place. He fights against these chains, kicking and screaming at himself and others to be set free. He uses his entire self – his might, his courage, his stubborn personality to have a chance to try one more time. You admire him a lot fur that. He is a hero to you, purractically. He is wonderful and terrible, and so much more than others make him out to be. You wish they could see it. You wish for countless things. You think about most, if not all, things you see. But there is only one thing you know for sure.

He might not see you…

But you see him.


End file.
